“The Duchesse is not alive,” responded Valentine with a faint smile. “You are speaking to Madame Vidal, the concierge of Mirabel.”
“Good God!” exclaimed the Comte de Brencourt, springing upright.
“How else do you suppose I could be here?”
“You are jesting!” cried he, still incredulous. “You . . . you . . . a concierge! Does no one know you? Then you are poor—in want! Madame, Madame! . . .”
Valentine lifted a hand. “Please, Monsieur de Brencourt, do not agitate yourself! I am not in want. There is no one left at Mirabel to recognise me—my portrait had a pike put through it. I came of my own free will, and I am not unhappy here.”
At this, as if it were the most stunning news of all, he did, perhaps unconsciously, subside into a chair, and, leaning his elbows on the table, took his head between his hands.
“Tell me what happened?” he said after a moment. And Mme de Trélan told him, shortly, the history of those seven years.
“Everybody thinks that I was killed,” she finished.
“I thought so,” said he without moving. “I thought so. . . . God pity me, I have carried that picture of your death about with me all these years. Oh, why did you not let me into the secret?”
She looked at him with a sort of maternal regret, a kinder look indeed, had he but met it, than he had ever won from her during all the period of his fruitless passion. “In the beginning I could tell no one, lest I should endanger the Tessiers. I disappeared, Comte, without exactly intending it. In the end I was glad to disappear. No one but Mme Tessier knows to this hour of my identity; I do not mean anyone to know. Believe me, I have not been unhappy with these good friends of mine. After being twice so near death, to see the sky and the green leaves in the spring, to know affection, as I have known it, and faithfulness. . . . But I am sorry if I have caused you so long a pain. . . . I had no news of you—for all I knew you had gone the same road.”